Archive / July 2013

I know you must think I’m a bit of a lush after a week of inventing cocktails and necking shots of vodka, so I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that yesterday’s new experience was getting a little merry at a beer festival. Good Beer was held at 82Mercer, a sprawling warehouse-esque conference hall …

Every day when I leave work, I’m greeted by this: Usually I walk right past without even noticing the food carts, but a few days ago I took another look and realised that I’ve never had a pretzel. Even though it’s originally a European food, for some reason I connect it with New York; perhaps …

Now I don’t know if you’ve realised over the course of this blog, but I do like the occasional bevvy. So why not learn how to make them for myself? Tonight I went to Sanctuary T in Soho for a mixology class. The bar/restaurant is known for its lengthy tea menu and now they’ve branched …

When I went to the air guitar competition a couple of months ago, most of the intrigue was learning that it was an actual thing. And today as I went to the annual world championship of extreme pogo, I had exactly the same feeling. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in learning that there are actual …

When I was little, Mummy and Daddy Warren always wanted to visit antique shops. My big sister and I would groan as we were pulled into yet another shop cluttered with higgledy piggledy chairs and chipped chandeliers. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point, somehow, I got it. Even though I rarely …

I’ve been to the Brooklyn Brainery in Prospect Heights a couple of times now – for a computer hacking course and another for making sauerkraut – but I’ve not revisited the lessons since. Tonight I went back to learn how to make soap, and I can say with certainty that I’ll be using these skills again. …

Speakeasies may be hard to find, but secrecy is exactly what they thrive on. Thankfully tonight I tracked down one of SoHo’s hidden gems – a Russian vodka bar. I’ve been to a few speakeasies since I’ve been here, but none have given me quite the same surprise as when Helen and I walked into …

Last time I had a dinner date with Katia, we went to Africa. The time before that, it was Malaysia. And tonight we decided to pop a little further north to Turkey. We met at Peri Ela, a skinny slice of a restaurant in the Upper East Side. As a vegetarian whose only knowledge of …

Tonight Ryan and I headed to Smalls, a tiny basement jazz club in the West Village. Shamefully, this is the first jazz club I’ve been to since moving to the city. The place was intimate – low lighting, rows of chairs pushed right up to the stage and a charming, shabby bar that made it hard …

I have been a bingo fan for years. When I was at St Andrews, us girls would get dressed up and head to a bingo hall on the outskirts of Dundee for a night of laughing, losing and lashing on wine from plastic glasses. While I’d like to think I was a little classier these …

After Bree and Brad’s beautiful wedding ceremony last night, Lizzie, Paul, Ricardo and I decided to keep the party going – and they decided to give me a hand with today’s new experience in the early hours of this morning. We walked west to the beach for a dip in Lake Michigan – a freshwater lake …

When I’ve asked both Chicago natives and Chicago fans what’s the one thing I should do when I’m in the city, they’ve unanimously said the Architecture River Cruise. So today I took their advice. The open-topped boat tour leaves from the Magnificent Mile and, for 90 minutes, travels along the Y shape of the Chicago River. A …

Today I popped to Chicago, where Bree is getting married tomorrow. After a delicious rehearsal dinner at Viand, I dodged the rain and skipped to the John Hancock Center to give the city a good look. I’ve only been to Chicago once before – for 4th July about five years ago – but I always include …

Tonight Rachel, Louise, Ollie and I headed to Koreatown to sing karaoke with some NBC folks we met at the bowling league. We went to Gagopa Karaoke – where I actually went out on my first ever night in the city when I moved here. I’ve done karaoke a fair few times and I usually stick to my …

So far I think I’ve made the most of the city’s best-known parks, from Central to Prospect and Tompkins Square. But one I’ve entirely overlooked is Bryant Park. The reason for this could be because it’s in Midtown. I hate Midtown. The sidewalks are swarming and the heat right now means the whole place reeks of …

When I went to Seattle at the beginning of the year, Pike Place Market entertained me for hours. I tasted samples, grimaced at googly-eyed fish, admired teeny tiny cakes and enjoyed rustic slabs of pie. It was an indulgent, leisurely treat – one I’ve also had in London, Philadelphia and Boston. And yet, the whole time I’ve been in New …

A couple of months ago I smacked some golf balls at the driving ranges at Chelsea Piers, and tonight I attempted to complete my game by perfecting my putt at Manhattan’s mini golf course. The greens, which are at Pier 25 in Tribeca, overlook the Hudson River and New Jersey as the One World Trade Center, Gehry apartments …

I feel like I’ve had a truly rural visit to England this time around – taking in the Sussex hills while chugging along in a steam engine and visiting a vintage tractor show – and today I concluded the trip with another countryside classic: Picking and cooking with homegrown produce. I’ve been in New York …

Yesterday’s trip to the Bluebell Railway clearly didn’t satisfy our need for old-fashioned Britain. Today Dyl, Mel and I headed to the South of England Showground in Ardingly for a Vintage Vehicle Show. This is another example of me finally making the most of the things on my doorstep. I went to high school in …

I’ve nipped back to England for a long weekend to surprise my sister, who’s visiting from New Zealand. One look at the rolling hills of West Sussex and New York feels a million miles a way. My family lives in a rural Sussex village called Kingscote. ‘Village’ is a bit of a stretch; all it …

My lunch jaunts can get pretty repetitive, so today I decided to shake it up – and headed to Chinatown for a cup of bubble tea: A mysterious – but popular – drink with black balls bobbing around the bottom. Before I went, I had to check the stuff was vegetarian. I was suspicious that …

Quite often when I do my new things, the experience turns out very different from the one I expected. Like how normal I found all the girls at The Bachelorette audition, or how I left an air guitar competition convinced it was a serious sport. And tonight my reaction felt more extreme than the others. …

The Lincoln Center has entertained me with a couple of brilliant evenings of classical music this year – the New York Ballet, the Philharmonic Orchestra. But tonight it showed me something very different: Singing monkeys, dancing pigs and starfish suspended from the ceiling. I headed to the David H. Koch Theater to watch the hotly …

Tonight I hopped on the F train to Dumbo for a reading in Brooklyn Bridge Park. I expected to listen to some sedate paragraphs while lolling about in the grass but I got much, much more – a spectacular view of Manhattan, a masterclass in animation and that ‘I love New York’ warmth. The reading …